Voyage of the Turtle

As Carl Safina’s compelling natural history adventure makes clear, the fate of the Leatherback Turtle is in our hands. The only surviving species of its genus, family and suborder, the Leatherback is an evolutionary marvel: a “reptile” that behaves like a warm-blooded dinosaur, an ocean animal able to withstand colder water than most fishes and dive deeper than any whale. The distressing decline of these ancient sea turtles in Pacific waters and their surprising recovery in the Atlantic illuminate the results–both positive and negative–of our interventions and the lessons that can be applied, globally, to restore the oceans and its creatures.

We accompany award-winning natural history expert Safina and his colleagues as they track Leatherbacks across the world’s oceans and onto remote beaches of every continent, including a thrilling journey from Monterey, California, to nesting grounds in Papua New Guinea. In his peerless prose, Carl Safina captures the delicate interaction between these gentle giants and the humans who are playing a significant role in their survival.